A series of emails provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee from individuals tied to Solyndra offer striking characterizations about running strategy with the White House to secure assistance for the now-bankrupt solar energy firm.

Emails among George Kaiser, head of the George Kaiser Family Foundation; Ken Levit, the executive director of the Foundation; and Steve Mitchell, who manages Argonaut Private Equity and was a member of Solyndra's board; show that Vice President Joe Biden's office were very gung-ho.

"They about had an orgasm in Biden's office when we mentioned Solyndra," reads a Feb. 27, 2010, email from Levit to Mitchell. A follow-up email from Mitchell to Levit later that day responds with: "That's awesome! Get us a (Department of Energy) loan."

According to exchanges obtained by Fox News, in an email from Mitchell to Kaiser on March 5, 2010, Mitchell writes that "it appears things are headed in the right direction and (Energy Secretary Steven) Chu is apparently staying involved in Solyndra's application and continues to talk up the company as a success story."

In a Feb. 27, 2010, message from Levit to a party whose name has been redacted, Levit writes that there was a meeting with a group of people in "Biden's office -- they seemed to love our Brady Project -- also all big fans of Solyndra."

In an email from Mitchell to Kaiser on March 5, 2010, Mitchell writes that "it appears things are headed in the right direction and Chu is apparently staying involved in Solyndra's application and continues to talk up the company as a success story."

Solyndra received a half billion dollars in loans from the Department of Energy even as questions were raised over whether the California-based firm would stay afloat. The company filed for bankruptcy in September just weeks after the administration weighed a bailout.

One email from Kaiser to Mitchell and Levit on Oct. 6, 2010, reads: "We can possibly reinforce the effort so long as it is in the form of 'I thought you should know, in case it comes up' rather than 'can you help with this.'"

In another communique dated Oct. 6, 2010, Kaiser tells Mitchell and Levit that he is "concerned that DOE/Chu would resent the intervention and your problem could get more difficult. I would see an appeal as only as last resort an, even then, questionable. We need to discuss."

In an email between Mitchell and Kaiser, Mitchell notes that the White House has "started a policy discussion as to whether a company should be able to get a second loan."

House Republicans received the emails after subpoenaing the White House last week. Lawmakers say they want to know how much influence the White House put on the Energy Department to approve the loans. The administration denies anyone tried to influence the decision.

" The White House has repeatedly stated that no political influence was brought to bear with regard to Solyndra, and that Mr. George Kaiser, a Solyndra investor and Obama fundraiser, never discussed Solyndra during any of his 17 visits to the White House. Documents recently obtained by the committee directly contradict those statements," they wrote.

A well-placed source told Fox News that Kaiser was interviewed by investigators for the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday. GKFF spokeswoman Renzi Stone on Wednesday told Fox News that Kaiser never was directly involved in the deal.

"To reaffirm our previous public statements, George Kaiser had no discussions with the government regarding the loan to Solyndra," she said in a statement

Records made public Wednesday by House Republicans show Kaiser’s associates were interested in winning White House assistance in selling its panels to the government, and that they discussed Solyndra with Obama Administration officials in charge of stimulus funding.

Read the Solyndra e-mails.

A Republican-led House panel on Thursday agreed to subpoena the White House for documents related to Solyndra Inc., the failed California solar company that received a half-billion-dollar federal loan. (Nov. 3)

At one point, the messages refer to Solyndra and its operations as “prime poster children” of the stimulus program.

Solyndra’s biggest investor was a fund linked to the family foundation of George Kaiser, a Tulsa billionaire and bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Kaiser was involved in e-mail correspondence with his business colleagues about an upcoming White House meeting to get the administration’s help in selling its panels, and in seeking a second energy department loan, which if awarded would have been in addition to a $535 million loan the company received in 2009.

In a sane world, Congress would investigate, impeach, remove, and punish Obama and Biden. In the real world, Congress is on the take to, robbing and stealing America blind. Expect no help from them. -nfg-

Former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Arizona, who resigned in the wake of a congressional probe into the Fast and Furious undercover investigation his office oversaw, has admitted leaking a sensitive document about a federal agent who blew the whistle on the gunrunning operation, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican.

Mr. Grassley, in a statement late Tuesday, said the leaked document was “deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department that it was not provided to Congress, except in a secured room at department headquarters.”

“Leaking sensitive documents to the press and retaliating against whistleblowers is not good faith cooperation with Congress,” Mr. Grassley said.

The leak involved Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Agent John Dodson, one of several agents who testifed in June before a House committee that their ATF superiors told them to stand down and watch as weapons flowed from gun dealers in Arizona to criminals and violent drug cartels in Mexico as part of the Fast and Furious operation.

“The Justice Department confirmed that the Inspector General continues to investigate the leak, which means there are others who may be involved in drafting and distributing the talking points and document to the press,” Mr. Grassley said.

In August, Mr. Burke, who oversaw all federal prosecutions in Arizona, resigned while Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley, the lead prosecutor in the Fast and Furious investigation, was reassigned from the criminal division to the civil division. Kenneth E. Melson, ATF’s acting director, was reassigned the same day to a lesser role as senior adviser on forensic science.

At least two of those weapons, AK-47 assault rifles, turned up at the site of the fatal Dec. 14, 2010, shooting of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, killed by Mexican bandits just north of Nogales, Ariz.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the Burke resignation and the reassignments. The Fast and Furious operation has been disavowed by Mr. Holder and President Obama.

Mr. Burke’s Phoenix attorney, Lee Stein, said in a Nov. 8 letter to the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General — which was posted on Politico — that his client had provided information to a reporter who was working on several stories involving Fast and Furious. The attorney said “it was clear” to Mr. Burke from their conversations that the reporter already was aware of a memo about Agent Dodson and he wanted “to give context to information the reporter already had.”

The attorney wrote that because the memo’s topics involved closed investigations, it was not subject to any limitations on disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

“ Dennis regrets his role in disclosing the memo but he’s a stand-up guy and is willing to take responsibility for what he did,” the letter said. “It was absolutely not Dennis’s intent to retaliate against Special Agent Dodson or anyone else for the information they provided Congress.”

Mr. Stein said Mr. Burke has been “cooperating fully with the Department of Justice and with the Congress and will continue to do so.” It is unclear who else at Justice took part in sharing the memo with reporters. The Inspector General’s investigation into the leak was first reported by NPR in July.

The Inspector General’s Office and the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility are investigating the Fast and Furious operation, but it is not known when a final report might be made public.

Agent Dodson’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, said in a statement: “Special Agent Dodson demonstrated both tremendous courage and fidelity to the mission of ATF when he came forward to discuss the misguided Fast and Furious investigation. It is unfortunate that his superiors at ATF and DOJ did not listen to his attempts to address the matter internally, and instead chose to attack him once he, out of necessity, stepped forward.”

Mr. Driscoll described Mr. Burke’s public acknowledgment that he “participated in such misguided efforts to smear Agent Dodson is welcome, but unfortunately Burke did not act alone in attempting to ruin Special Agent Dodson’s career.”

According to new emails released by House Republicans, George Kaiser, a billionaire investor and bundler for President Obama's 2008 campaign, discussed the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra with White House officials.

The emails show a series of exchanges between Kaiser (who has an apparent fondness for Comic Sans) and his associates, including Steve Mitchell, an employee at his VC firm Argonaut and Ken Levit, an employee at the George Kaiser Family Foundation, discussing a number of interactions with the White House, including a statement that Solyndra was among the "prime poster children" of the administration's stimulus plan and that Kaiser and Levit had discussed Solyndra with "administration folks in DC":

A spokesperson for Kaiser had previously stated that he wasn't personally involved in promoting Solyndra with White House officials. A statement given to The Washington Post on Sept. 1 said Kaiser, "did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. Government regarding the loan."

Those statements were about the narrow issue of whether Kaiser had sought White House assistance to secure a $535 million loan guarantee that the Department of Energy granted Solyndra in March 2009. That decision became controversial after the solar company went bankrupt in September and because President Obama had held an event at the solar manufacturer's headquarter in September 2009 touting the company as a job creator.

White House officials have repeated the claim that they did not discuss the company and its loan with Kaiser. Last month Obama rejected the suggestion that political connections played a role, saying, "I have confidence decisions were made based upon what's good for the American people ... All I can say is the Department of Energy made these decisions based on their best judgments." ABC News asked a White House official specifically if Solyndra was discussed between Kaiser and top aides in the Obama administration:

Kaiser has "said publically that Solyndra was not discussed at these meetings, and we have no reason to dispute that," the White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had not been given approval to discuss the matter. "We understand that the conversations in these meetings were focused on the general policy priorities of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, including early childhood education and poverty, health care policy and energy policy."

Congressman Cliff Stearns, chair of the House Energy Committee's investigating subcommittee said that the new emails suggest politics played a role in the Solyndra decision. "Some of the e-mails we got are confirming what we thought, " he told The Atlantic Wire. "There was a tie-in between investor George Kaiser and the White House."

Additionally, during the time Solyndra's business began going downhill (October 2010), emails show Kaiser and his associates deliberating about getting additional help from the White House such as a loan revision noting that "The WH has offered to help in the past." It should be noted, however, that Kaiser is reluctant to ask for additional White House support, seeing it only as a "last resort" option if that:

And for the more prurient-minded readers, no e-mail dump is complete without examples of crass language and sexual euphemisms. For that, a candid exchange between Ken Levit and Steve Mitchell (we're not exactly sure what the context is):

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new emails. See all the e-mails below:

WASHINGTON — Newly released emails show that, contrary to White House claims, a major donor to President Barack Obama pushed for a loan to a solar energy company that later went bankrupt.

The donor, George Kaiser, pushed White House and Energy Department officials for a second loan for Solyndra Inc. last year, after the California company had already received a $528 million loan in 2009, the emails show.

The second loan was not approved. Instead, an investment venture controlled by Kaiser made a private loan that resulted in the firm and other investors moving ahead of taxpayers in line for repayment in case of a default by Solyndra.

Solyndra, the first renewable energy company to receive a federal loan under the 2009 stimulus law, declared bankruptcy in September and laid off its 1,100 workers, leaving taxpayers on the hook for more than a half-billion dollars.

The company's implosion and revelations that administration officials rushed to complete the loan in time for a September 2009 groundbreaking have become an embarrassment for Obama and a rallying cry for GOP critics of his green energy program.

Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and major Obama donor, was a frequent White House visitor in 2009 and 2010. White House officials for months have denied that Kaiser talked about Solyndra during those visits. One the nation's richest men, Kaiser owns an oil company and other energy interests and is chief donor to the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which invests in early childhood education and community health.

In one email released Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Kaiser said that when he and a foundation official visited the White House last year, officials showed "thorough knowledge of the Solyndra story, suggesting it was one their prime poster children" for renewable energy.

In another email, a Kaiser associate appears confident that Energy Secretary Steven Chu would approve a second loan for Solyndra.

"It appears things are headed in the right direction and Chu is apparently staying involved in Solyndra's application and continues to talk up the company as a success story," Steve Mitchell, managing director of Kaiser's venture-capital firm, Argonaut Private Equity, wrote in a March 5, 2010, e-mail. Mitchell also served on Solyndra's board of directors.

The emails and other released Wednesday were obtained through a request to major investors for Solyndra-related documents, said Sean Bonyun, a spokesman for the Energy Committee.

The emails were released as the White House faces a Thursday deadline to respond to a committee subpoena for White House documents related to Solyndra.

White House officials accused the GOP-led committee of misleading the public by making it appear that Kaiser pushed for the original 2009 loan rather than the emergency loan last year, which was never approved.

"Even the documents cherry-picked by House Republicans today affirm what we have said all along: This loan was a decision made on the merits at the Department of Energy," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in an email Wednesday. "Nothing in the 85,000 pages of documents produced thus far by the administration or in these four (emails) indicate any favoritism to political supporters. We wish that House Republicans were as zealous about creating jobs as they were about this oversight investigation."

Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who heads a subcommittee that is investigating the Solyndra loan, said the emails contradict White House claims that Kaiser did not actively lobby White House officials on Solyndra.

"It is clear from these documents that Kaiser and his employees enjoyed ready access to the West Wing of the White House and exercised influence throughout the loan process," Stearns said.

George B. Kaiser (born 1943)is an American businessman. He is the Chairman of BOK Financial Corporation. He is among the top 100 richest people in the world.

In January 2009, Kaiser drew attention after he told a committee of the Oklahoma House of Representatives that the state should eliminate or reduce tax incentives for the oil and gas industry, and instead use the money for health care or education programs or for tax cuts for other taxpayers.

Kaiser was a fundraiser for the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, and functioned as a campaign bundler for Obama: an individual who collects contributions to a candidate from others that are then simultaneously given to the candidate.[28] At one 2007 event for Obama, he raised more than $250,000.

An article by the nonpartisan and open government organization Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison has analyzed Kaiser’s business activities and his use of legal tax avoidance strategies, including how during the 1980s bust in the oil industry in Oklahoma and Texas. Kaiser bought up struggling energy companies whose losses provided him with tax deductions that effectively offset his own income and left him with little or no tax liability.

The report says Kaiser paid no taxes to the federal government for years and that when he did pay taxes, just once in a six-year period, it was just under $11,700, meaning he paid taxes on a taxable wage of $5.62 per hour. The report comes from the Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison. Allison’s post indicates many experts, including the IRS, believe Kaiser’s tax strategies were illegal

The report says Kaiser paid no taxes to the federal government for years and that when he did pay taxes, just once in a six-year period, it was just under $11,700, meaning he paid taxes on a taxable wage of $5.62 per hour. The report comes from the Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison. Allison’s post indicates many experts, including the IRS, believe Kaiser’s tax strategies were illegal